


A Crease in Time

by NightsMistress



Category: Unstoppable Wasp (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:41:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: Shay invites her friends to try out her new and improved teleporter 2.0. In retrospect she should have checked their pockets for gadgets first.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Crease in Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilacsigil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/gifts).



It is a widely known fact amongst the super geniuses of the world that inspiration without forethought can be the herald to misfortune.

When Archimedes stood up and yelled "Eureka!", a few minutes later he slipped over to land on his rear simply because he had forgotten to hold onto the wall while announcing his success to the world.

When Reed Richards first used unstable molecules to make the Fantastic Four their costumes, he'd forgotten to make sure he didn't sew his hand to the fabric.

And when Shay invited the scientists of G.I.R.L. to be the first to test her rebuilt portal, she had forgotten to check her friends' pockets to see if they were carrying any other experimental gadgets.

In retrospect, Shay had been warned: Do not cross the science streams.

_**After the inevitable explosion:**_

The sky overhead had two moons, one pendulous and heavy and one a mere speck in comparison. Nadia wondered how that would affect the tides for a planet that clearly existed in the habitable zone. The grass underneath her back was crunchy and, as she lifted a stalk to examine it, it was apparently lilac. Nadia sat up immediately, clapping her hands together in delight like a seal.

"Oh my gosh," she announced to the world at large. "Are we on a different _planet_?"

"Was it the moons that gave it away?" Shay said from above her. Nadia didn't need to look at her expression to know that she was rolling her eyes at Nadia's comment.

Nadia didn't care; this was the first time that science had thrown her onto a completely different planet and it was _amazing._ She looked around, eyes darting from one new thing to the next, fingertips rubbing the gritty soil to see how the ferric oxides stained her skin rust-red.

"And the gravity," Ying said. "The air is breathable."

"That's true," Shay agreed enthusastically, to Nadia's amusement. Shay was never anything other than sweet and adoring towards Ying.

"But why are we here?" Priya asked. "I thought you said that your portal could only take us as far as Seattle?"

"Yeah," Shay agreed. She sucked on her bottom lip in thought for a moment, before groaning in heartfelt exasperation. "I can't believe I forgot to ask. Was anyone carrying anything on them when they went through?"

"A lot, but I don't think my keys and lip gloss are why we're here," Priya said.

"Mobile phones?" Ying wondered. "Maybe their ambient field interfered with your portal somehow…?"

"It's a good thought, but no, they wouldn't have," Shay said. "The portal would have fried them anyway."

The other three girls exchanged looks. At this point, they were getting replacement phones on a weekly basis. Nadia had initially dismissed the idea of getting a phone sponsorship deal because she had been told it would be "selling out" (though she wasn't completely sure what that meant), but it was looking a little tempting right now. How would she play her sixteen gatcha games now?

The thought of getting behind on her pulls on Super Magical Girl Avengers made Nadia remember that she had been carrying something in the sleeve of her shirt, and that that something was no longer with her now. She started fumbling through her pockets, her stomach sinking as all she uncovered was lint, her seventh fried phone this month, and her keys. Nothing felt like a slender rod the length of her forearm, and that didn't bode well.

"Do you think it was the phase shifting wand?" she said when everyone turned to her.

"The what?" Shay asked blankly.

Nadia took this as a perfect opportunity to explain her latest invention. She was rather proud of it, after all, as it had been the first thing she and Ying had worked on since they escaped from the Red Room.

"It's a phase shifting wand! It's like the gloves we made except I thought that maybe we could shoot a dart out of it and generate a field around the dart like a taser."

"Oh yes," Ying said, smiling in understanding. "And then we made it into a wand because of those shows you watched."

"Yeah, that Sailing Moon show?"

"I don't know what hurts more," Shay said in despair, "that you still don't get the title right, or that that's probably why we're here. A phase-shifting device would derange the portal..."

"What does it look like?" Priya asked.

"Don't pretend you don't know what Sailor Moon's magical girl wand looks like," Shay said, looking at Priya sidelong. "Also, we need the portal too otherwise we're not getting home."

"I don't know what this wand looks like," Priya said, all affected wounded dignity, before climbing a nearby tree. "But I will see if I can find it."

"And the portal!" Shay called up to her.

_**After an hour of searching…** _

"Fun science fact," Nadia announced, talking to her pressed-together wrists as if they were an attentive audience. "When you put a phase-shifting device through a teleporter portal, you can travel in space without a spaceship." She giggled. "How cool is that?"

"What are you doing?" Ying asked, not looking up from her careful scrutiny of the knee-high lilac grass that extended to the horizon.

"I'm recording our adventures in my log," Nadia said, lowering her hands down to her side.

"Like a Captain's Log?" Shay asked, brushing pollen from her trousers.

"I have no idea what that means, but yes!" Nadia said brightly.

"Why did you put them in your wrists?" Ying asked.

"Where else would you keep a secret diary?"

"Of course," Ying nodded solemnly. "That does make sense."

"I really do not understand you two sometimes," Priya sighed from overhead. The vine wrapped around her brought her slowly back to the ground, and remained wrapped around her arm in a delicate embrace after Priya's feet were safely on the ground.

"Did you see it?" Shay asked. "Did you see my transporter portal?

"Yes. And—" she raised her hand out of a coil of leaves to reveal a metal rod as long as her forearm. "—I found the interdimensional glowstick."

"Our magical girl wand!" Nadia cried in delight.

"I knew it'd survive!" Ying replied.

The two gave each other high fives, their glee making them utterly impervious to the exchange of fondly exasperated looks over their heads.

"How are we getting home?" Priya asked as she carefully extracted herself from the vine from earlier, now being extra clingy as it attempted to rewrap itself around her forearm. "Shay? You have a plan, don't you?"

"Hm?" Shay jumped, startled out of her staring at Ying with adoring eyes. She blinked, expression blank for a moment before she smiled and straightening her cravat. "Oh, yeah. I do. I'll tell you as we walk to the transporter…"

_**One very detailed explanation with a lot of science jargon later:** _

"And that's how we'll get home," Shay concluded, waving at the glowing blue portal behind her.

The explanation had taken longer than the walk to the transporter. Consequently, at about ten minutes into the explanation and two minutes after they have arrived, Priya had convinced a vine to arrange itself into a long bench, and the other three girls had perched themselves onto it.

"You're saying that to get home we need to head back the way we came," Priya said first, putting her hand up to ask the question.

"Yeah," Shay agreed. "Pretty much."

"While hoping that the phase shifting device doesn't throw us even further away from our usual dimension."

"Yep."

"And we have no way of telling the Avengers where we are."

"I think they're busy doing their taxes," Nadia observed. She had no idea what it was like to do taxes, given that she had grown up in an underground bunker in Siberia, but Jan had made it very clear that taxes were very important and were absolutely due that day.

"Alright, I'm in," Priya said. "How bad could it be? It's not like there's a world full of dinosaurs, right?"

"Definitely not," Shay said.

"That's exceedingly implausible," agreed Ying.

Nadia, who had been a superhero long enough to know that the implausible happened on a daily basis, wondered aloud, "Did we just tempt fate?"

"No!" Shay insisted. "We're scientists! We don't believe in unquantifiable things like fate and destiny."

Priya tilted her head to look through the luminescent blue field to the world on the other side. "I see cars," she observed. "That's a good sign."

"Dinosaurs could have invented cars," Ying said. "We cannot rule it out."

Nadia leaned in to have a closer look herself. She thought she could recognize the buildings in the background as being the ones you could see from the lab's windows. There were people milling about at ground level, held back by what appeared to be plastic tape. While most appeared disturbed by what appeared to be a glowing blue portal to the unknown, there was one middle-aged man whose resignation was obvious by the line of his shoulders as he held his mobile phone to his ear. Nadia could recognize that particular world-weary man anywhere; she'd made him sigh in exaggerated despair three times already this week.

"I think that's Jarvis!" Nadia said, pointing at Jarvis. She waved enthusiastically. "Hey, Jarvis!"

Unfortunately, Jarvis could not hear her because Nadia was on the other side of a wormhole, but she decided that it was the thought that counted.

"That's settled it," Shay said. "Jeeves is definitely not a dinosaur."

She extended the wand, holding onto the end. "Everyone, hold on. We don't want to get lost."

All four girls grabbed onto the wand and shuffled, crab-like, towards the portal.

"To infinity and beyond!" Nadia said as they stepped through.

There was a moment of transition, impossible to describe, and then Nadia blinked against the flash of a camera and the wordless barrage of multiple journalists asking questions all at once. The other three girls let go of the wand, leaving Nadia to adjust her grip or risk dropping it. She shuffled it up into the sleeve of her shirt.

"We come in peace," Shay said, stepping forward, and holding up her left hand while separating her fingers into a V shape. Nadia was very impressed at her skill, as Nadia was still learning to do it with sticky-tape.

"My mother is going to kill me," Priya hissed. "Don't make it worse!".

"Smile at the camera!" Nadia urged Ying, who was staring alarmingly stone-faced at the journalists. She waved jauntily at the nearest camera with the arm that wasn't hiding the wand.

"Thank you, everyone," Nadia heard from behind her. She sagged in relief. That was Jan in her best professional voice, and she would know exactly what to do.

"There'll be a media release tonight," Jan said, her smile flawless and professional as she walked in front of the girls to block the cameras' view of them. "Thank you for your time."

"Thank you so much," Nadia whispered fervently.

"We'll talk later," Jan replied sotto voce. Nadia was fine with them talking later. Much later. She had, after all, disrupted Jan from completing her tax return and she needed to craft the best apology for that.


End file.
